Incumbents in local elections
do well except in city of Mabel

Voters chose a new mayor and council member in Mabel, but incumbents generally fared well in local elections that had plenty of names on the ballots.

There was a lot of interest in Mabel city positions with two people running for mayor and seven for council. Just one incumbent was re-elected for the three positions open.

Incumbent Melissa Folstad lost the mayoral race to Brian Street 173 to 117 votes. Street, who had served on the Mabel council for nine years until leaving in 2010, had 50.7 percent of the vote as 15 percent went to write-in candidates. Folstad was seeking her second term.

Mabel business owner Laura St. Mary received the most votes for council with 138, two more than incumbent Kirsten Wyffels, who was also elected. Others receiving votes were Carl Westby with 113, Jeff Rein with 85, Darrell Peterson with 47, Davey Peterson with 36 and Kristina Nolte with 27. Write-ins had 59 votes.

Harmony had three candidates for mayor, but incumbent Steven Donney had a clear majority with 64.5 percent of the vote. Jay Mensink, Jr., had 19 percent and R. Dan Tieffenbacher had 13 percent. For council in Harmony, only two names were on the ballot, incumbent Debbie Swenson and newcomer Lynn Mensink. The two women won election.

Canton had a race for council with three candidates filing for the two positions. The two incumbents won with Cindy Shanks getting 120 votes and Carl Ernst getting 94 votes. George Hafner had 66 votes. Canton Mayor Donivee Johnson, who has served since 1993, ran unopposed.

For the Mabel-Canton School Board, incumbents Mary Kuhn, who has been on the board for 12 years, and six-year member Jane Hall were the leaders with 706 and 563 votes respectively. Joining them on the board will be Mark Weidemann with 498 votes. The other two candidates, Jacob Hershberger and Dustin Tollefsrud, received 402 and 373 votes respectively.

In the Fillmore Central School Board race, all the persons listed on the ballot were winners. Ross Kiehne, Deb Ristau and James Love won re-election easily in the general election. In the special election, Emily Ellis was the winner with 85.8 percent of the vote. Write-in candidates, including the announced challenger Josh Krage, received 14.2 percent.